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Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America

Title
Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America / Daniel Blake Smith.
ISBN
9781137279811
1137279818
Edition
First edition.
Publication
New York City : St. Martin's Press, 2016.
Physical Description
x, 275 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Summary
"In the early years after the Revolution, Americans were on the move, seeking to establish a new way of life. And, more than the church or the school or the courthouse, it was the family that nurtured the American Dream. In this novel-like narrative, Daniel Blake Smith vividly brings to life the Fletchers, a family of loving, ambitious, at times insecure pioneers who scattered across the vast expanse of post-revolutionary America but kept in touch through letters despite their wildly different life paths. On a hard scrabble farm in Vermont, the patriarch, Jesse Fletcher, struggled with debt and depression but managed to educate his children, especially his son Elijah, a Yankee who moved to Virginia, shocked by the horrors of slavery but then seduced by the plantation lifestyle. Another son, Calvin, left at age 17 for Indianapolis to become a self-made lawyer, banker, and a prominent citizen and passionate abolitionist. The grandchildren include Indiana, a women's education activist who donated her home to create Sweet Briar College; black sheep Lucian, who went to California to join in the gold rush; and physician Billy captured as a spy during the Civil War. Through letters and diaries, we find that the Fletchers appear surprisingly similar to us; they dream, fret, fight, and love. Despite numerous heartaches and setbacks, their spirit of enterprise, sacrifice, mobility, and education endures as American values to this day"-- Provided by publisher.
Format
Books
Language
English
Added to Catalog
September 27, 2016
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Beginnings
Heading West
Settling In
"The Best Fortune We Can Give Our Children"
Public Life
Calamities
War and Loyalty
Legacies.
Citation

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